Arromanches-les-Bains

Y sobre uno de sus acantilados, el cuidado cementerio estadounidense de Coleville-sur-Mer, la punta de Hoc, un promontorio acribillado por las bombas para destruir unos cañones falsos, el puente Pegaso sobre el Orne, en Benouville, junto al café Gondree, que presume de ser la primera casa liberada de Francia, todavía regentada por la misma familia, la colosal batería de Longues-sur-Mer o el emotivo memorial de Caen dedicado a la paz.

En Arromanches-les-Bains, la marea baja devuelve a la luz los restos de algunos de los cien-- 115 bloques de hormigón con los que se creó un puerto artificial de ocho kilómetros y del campanario de Sainte-Mère-Église.

Cuelga un paracaídas que recuerda al soldado que se quedó allí enganchado.

Hacia el interior se abre un paisaje agrícola moteado por granjas, algunas acondicionadas como encantadores alojamientos, cuyas pequeñas parcelas están separadas por altos setos entre los que se hunde un laberinto de caminos.

And because it...

Bayou itself is only 12 kilometers away from the Arromanches beaches where the D-Day landings were.

And among all the soldiers were several hundred journalists who landed with the soldiers in June 1944.

And not carrying weapons, they're carrying their notebooks, their typewriters.

For our large group, the service was slow, even when you take into account French standards are different for what is fast and what is slow.

And then the next day, we went to Arromanches-les-Bains.

And this is the area of the D-Day beaches that is just in between the Utah and Omaha beaches where the American beaches are, which are to the west, and then the British and Canadian beaches to the east.

But the significant part of this particular harbor is this is where the Mulberry Harbor was built.

Only operated for 100 days, but during that 100 days, it offloaded 400,000 soldiers, four million tons of equipment, and 500,000 vehicles.

So fairly significant to the effort there.

And then we went to a 365 experience there, Arromanches 360, that one of the many, many D-Day museums, its emphasis is more that artificial harbor than anything else.

There's another D-Day museum we did not get to in Arromanches, one of the older D-Day museums that was opened shortly after the war that I was, recommended to me, but I have not seen it yet.